Work

A Unified Marketing Approach for Neenah Paper

By combining business insights, strategic design, and innovative technology platforms, And Partners helped Neenah Paper stretch its marketing budget by rethinking the way it goes to market.

What started with a single project has grown into a long-term partnership that has helped Neenah become the model for a paper company in the digital age while cementing its position as a leader in fine papers.

And Partners worked with Neenah to identify and plan for major customer touchpoints, allowing the company to:

Precisely target its customers at key points in their decision making cycle

Better understand, predict and change customer behavior

Uncover new markets and opportunities for growth

Remain relevant to the next generation of paper users, who have grown up using primarilydigital media

The key to this marketing approach is a robust suite of mobile, online, and desktop tools and resources that seamlessly and intelligently bridge the analog and digital environments. This helps the company cast a wider net by making it easier than ever for customers to sample, specify, and purchase Neenah Papers.

62 Million Media Impressions in Six Weeks

And Partners developed Think Ink: Color Unleashed, an integrated suite of mobile, web and iPhone that enable designers and printers to use color psychology to do their jobs better.

In addition to making the designer’s job easier and more creative, Color Unleashed provides the opportunity to order free samples of colored paper with just a few taps or clicks. This critical feature simplified the often complicated task of sampling paper and educated the next generation of digital designers who have less experience working with paper.

The integrated marketing campaign to promote Color Unleashed garnered 62 million media impressions in just six weeks and was featured on the Reuters Newswire jumbotron in Times Square. Six months after launch, the mobile app had been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

ROI of 25 to 1

After identifying an unmet customer need for easier and more useful paper samples, And Partners conceived a new product for Neenah, The Personal Proof. This free on-demand proofing service has revolutionized one of Neenah’s core marketing functions: delivering paper samples to customers.

As far back as Gutenberg, paper samples have been distributed the same way: as books of blank or preprinted pages. Today, Neenah prints each bespoke paper sample on-demand at a fraction of the cost and delivers it for free within three to five days.

With Personal Proof, Neenah can meaningfully reach 25 customers for the same cost of one traditional preprinted promotion. Customers get better quality and more useful print samples using their own imagery. Neenah encourages sampling and increases brand preference while gathering valuable information about its best customers with every transaction.

The Personal Proof was developed using rapid prototyping which put the new tool in the hands of customers quickly. It was unveiled with Classic Linen papers as a pilot program called “Do You Love Linen.” This model enabled Neenah to gather critical feedback before expanding the tool for all of its lines.

A More Advanced Paper Website

And Partners also helped Neenah Paper achieve the goal of unifying all investments in digital tools with its ecommerce site at neenahpaper.com. We used this opportunity to relaunch the Neenah Paper brand online with a new message that explained how the site’s robust suite of paper sampling and specifying will make designers jobs easier and their time more productive.

In addition to providing strategy, architecture, planning, and design for the online business, we also created an integrated marketing campaign that used social media to notify existing customers that change was coming and attract new visitors with special offers and promotions.

An Ecosystem of Digital Tools, A Roadmap for the Future

Our relationship has been one of firsts. Together, we created the first mobile app in the fine paper industry and the first on-demand custom paper sampling service.

And there’s still more to come, guided by a consistent strategic approach that uses technology to enhance the customer experience.